Written Answers Wednesday 9 July 2008

Scottish Executive

Antisocial Behaviour

Margaret Smith (Edinburgh West) (LD): To ask the Scottish Executive how many antisocial behaviour orders have been issued to (a) 12, (b) 13, (c) 14 and (d) 15-year-olds since May 2007.

Fergus Ewing: The information requested is not held centrally.

Communities

Ken Macintosh (Eastwood) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive what funding or support specifically for the Sikh community has been announced by ministers in the last year.

Stewart Maxwell: In July 2007 the Scottish Government awarded Sikh Sanjog £4,500 to continue developing its youth participation project for young Sikhs. This funding allowed the organisation to involve Sikh girls in youth participation activities.

  In 2007-08 the Scottish Government granted the Edinburgh Interfaith Association £12,500 to develop two youth "identity projects" one for Muslim young men and the other aimed at Sikh young men. The funding allowed the project to develop 15 week workshops which enabled participants to develop a sense of "self" and belonging. The project also focused on building relations between participants and elders within their community.

Health

Dr Richard Simpson (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive, in the event of a positive decision to transfer medical, nursing, and/or allied health professional services from the Scottish Prison Service to the NHS, what additional funding will be made available to individual NHS Health Boards, including Forth Valley in whose area there are three prisons.

Nicola Sturgeon: The Scottish Government has accepted the recommendations of the Prison Healthcare Advisory Board in principle and intends to establish a national programme board for prisoners’ healthcare which will oversee and steer the preparatory work for the eventual transfer of the primary healthcare services from Scottish prison services to the NHS. This will include the financial implications and funding requirements to deliver the proposed models of care in due course.

Hospital-Acquired Infection

Irene Oldfather (Cunninghame South) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive how many cases of clostridium difficile have been reported by NHS Ayrshire and Arran in the last 12 months, also broken down by month.

Nicola Sturgeon: Data for the month of June 2008 is not yet available. However, NHS Ayrshire and Arran have advised that during the period June 2007 to May 2008 there were 658 cases of clostridium difficile recorded in NHS Ayrshire and Arran covering all ages and settings. This is broken down as follows:

  

 Month/Year
 No. of Cases


 June 2007
 52


 July 2007
 68


 August 2007
 63


 September 2007
 59


 October 2007
 57


 November 2007
 41


 December 2007
 41


 January 2008
 74


 February 2008
 38


 March 2008
 53


 April 2008
 53


 May 2008
 59


 Total
 658

Hospital-Acquired Infection

Irene Oldfather (Cunninghame South) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive what guidance it has issued regarding informing patients and relatives where a patient is discharged following a clostridium difficile infection.

Nicola Sturgeon: A national leaflet on clostridium difficle has been produced by Health Protection Scotland (HPS) and is available to NHS boards for downloading from the HPS website. Printed versions will be issued to NHS boards shortly.

  HPS consulted widely on the content of the draft version of the leaflet and the final version was agreed with the Chair of the Public Involvement and Communications Team (PICT), a participatory member of the Scottish Government’s healthcare-associated infection multi-agency task force representing members of the public.

Hospital-Acquired Infection

Irene Oldfather (Cunninghame South) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive how many deaths have occurred as a result of clostridium difficile in NHS Ayrshire and Arran in the last 12 months, also broken down by month.

Nicola Sturgeon: Data for the periods April, May and June 2008 are not yet available. However, NHS Ayrshire and Arran have advised that during the period April 2007 to March 2008 there were 24 deaths in NHS Ayrshire and Arran where clostridium difficile was recorded as either a primary or a contributory cause of death. This is broken down as follows:

  

 Month/Year
 No. of Cases


 April 2007
 1


 May 2007
 1


 June 2007
 3


 July 2007
 NIL


 August 2007
 2


 September 2007
 4


 October 2007
 2


 November 2007
 2


 December 2007
 2


 January 2008
 2


 February 2008
 1


 March 2008
 4


 Total
 24

Hospital-Acquired Infection

Irene Oldfather (Cunninghame South) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive what guidance it has issued regarding the procedure of notification to GPs of patients discharged following a clostridium difficile infection to ensure that any relapse is dealt with urgently and appropriately.

Nicola Sturgeon: Discharge documents completed by clinicians should follow the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) Guideline 65, and be timely and provide appropriate information of the condition of the patient, and the management undertaken whilst the patient was in hospital. An overarching new Scottish guidance document on clostridium difficile is currently under preparation by Health Protection Scotland. The procedures in the SIGN Guideline 65 will be referred to in the new guidance.

Hospital-Acquired Infection

Irene Oldfather (Cunninghame South) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive what guidance it has issued to NHS boards across Scotland regarding the in-house laundering of patients clothes where the patient is suffering from clostridium difficile.

Nicola Sturgeon: I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-11402 on 14 April 2008. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search .

Hospital-Acquired Infection

Irene Oldfather (Cunninghame South) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive on how many occasions wards have been closed as a result of hospital-acquired infections in the last 12 months, also broken down by NHS board.

Irene Oldfather (Cunninghame South) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive on how many occasions wards have been closed as a result of clostridium difficile infections in the last 12 months, also broken down by NHS board.

Nicola Sturgeon: NHS boards would notify Health Protection Scotland (HPS) of ward closures in accordance with the guidance set out in Annex 4 of the 2003 guidance document Managing Incidents Presenting Actual and Potential Risks to Public Health: Guidance on Roles and Responsibilities of Incident Control Teams . The guidance sets out the circumstances under which HPS should be informed of incidents and outbreaks but not all ward closures require to be notified to HPS, this would depend on the scale of the outbreak and the necessary actions that followed. The information requested is therefore not available.

Hospital-Acquired Infection

Ross Finnie (West of Scotland) (LD): To ask the Scottish Executive how frequently ambulances and emergency vehicles are used for transporting patients to be tested for (a) clostridium difficile and (b) MRSA.

Nicola Sturgeon: This information is not recorded by the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS).

  As with all other NHS boards, the SAS works in accordance with the NHS Scotland Code of Practice for the Local Management of Hygiene and Healthcare Associated Infection. NHS Quality Improvement Scotland monitor compliance with infection control standards across Scotland.

Hospital-Acquired Infection

Jackson Carlaw (West of Scotland) (Con): To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S3W-11764 by Nicola Sturgeon on 22 April 2008, why it does not monitor the scale and severity of hospital-acquired infections on a hospital-by-hospital basis; whether it will start to do so and, if so, when.

Nicola Sturgeon: Monitoring infection rates at local level, for example by ward, clinical specialty or hospital, is the responsibility of each NHS board.

  The independent review of the Vale of Leven hospital will examine the adequacy of local systems and practices that were in place there. The recommendations to be made by the review team may have implications for local systems and practices that operate elsewhere.

  A range of national mandatory healthcare associated infection surveillance systems are in place to assist NHS boards in this exercise and all NHS boards are required to follow the NHS Quality Improvement Scotland Healthcare Associated Infection standards and the NHS Scotland Code of Practice. Cases of outbreaks of infections are reported to Health Protection Scotland who provide expert support, advice and guidance.

Housing

Johann Lamont (Glasgow Pollok) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive when the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing or the Minister for Communities will convene a meeting with Glasgow Housing Association, local housing organisations and community-controlled housing associations to discuss the findings of the Mazars report and the response of the Scottish Housing Regulator.

Stewart Maxwell: Ministers have no plans to convene such a meeting. Ministers met with both Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) and the Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum in June. Both have committed to discuss the issues raised in the Mazars report and explore the areas identified in the Scottish Housing Regulator’s assessment. Their agreed objective is to make SST happen. Ministers welcome the fact that these meetings are now underway and that a positive start has been made.

Housing

Tom McCabe (Hamilton South) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive how much Housing Association Grant has been allocated to South Lanarkshire Council in each year since 1999-2000.

Stewart Maxwell: The grant allocation at the beginning of each financial year is a single figure which includes provision for all relevant elements of the Affordable Housing Investment Programme (AHIP). In addition to Housing Association Grant, this includes grant mechanisms such as Rural Home Ownership Grant, Rural Empty Property grants, Grant for the Physical and Social Environment and Special Needs Capital grants. Housing Association Grant allocation is not recorded separately.

  The amount of AHIP funding allocated to South Lanarkshire Council at the beginning of each year from 2002-03 onwards is set out in the table below. Records are not held prior to 2002-03 in the manner requested.

  

 Year
AHIP Allocation (£ Million)


 2002-03
 8.995


 2003-04
 10.136


 2004-05
 11.852


 2005-06
 12.250


 2006-07
 16.380


 2007-08
 19.284


 2008-09
 15.300

NHS Hospitals

Murdo Fraser (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con): To ask the Scottish Executive how many pages of instruction, guidance, regulation and any other sort of direction it has issued to hospital managers in each of the last five years.

Murdo Fraser (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con): To ask the Scottish Executive how many documents containing instructions, guidance, regulation and any other sort of direction it has issued to hospital managers in each of the last five years.

Nicola Sturgeon: The Scottish Government Health Directorates issue a weekly bulletin containing a digest of their recent publications and this is available on the Scottish Health on the Web (SHOW) website at http://www.show.scot.nhs.uk/ . The bulletin is circulated to chief executives of NHS boards and operating divisions to cascade as appropriate, and is also circulated more widely to other interested bodies for information. The table below sets out the number of documents contained within each weekly bulletin issued in each of the last five years:

  Table 1 – Number of Documents Issued by Year

  

 2003
 2004
 2005
 2006
 2007


 337
 238
 161
 166
 214



  Source: www.show.scot.nhs.uk.

  In addition there may be ad-hoc correspondence issued that is not included in the weekly bulletin. Information on the number of these documents is not collected.

Speech and Language Therapy

Ross Finnie (West of Scotland) (LD): To ask the Scottish Executive how many language therapists were employed in each of the last five years, broken down by NHS board.

Nicola Sturgeon: The information requested is set out in the following table:

  Speech and Language Therapists Employed by NHS Board (Head Count)

  

 
 2003
 2004
 2005
 2006
 2007


 NHS Borders
 18
 20
 26
 26
 26


 NHS Fife
 53
 65
 70
 70
 71


 NHS Lothian
 166
 172
 174
 181
 199


 NHS Highland
 35
 39
 40
 61
 72


 NHS Grampian
 113
 102
 105
 119
 133


 NHS Orkney
 4
 5
 5
 5
 5


 NHS Tayside
 73
 76
 80
 78
 86


 NHS Western Isles
 9
 6
 7
 9
 11


 NHS Shetland
 3
 3
 3
 3
 4


 NHS Ayrshire and Arran
 58
 62
 61
 61
 68


 NHS Argyll and Clyde*
 77
 81
 88
 N/A
 N/A


 NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde
 N/A
 N/A
 N/A
 248
 274


 NHS Greater Glasgow*
 167
 168
 166
 N/A
 N/A


 NHS Lanarkshire
 117
 117
 118
 117
 129


 NHS Forth Valley
 69
 66
 67
 63
 72


 NHS Dumfries and Galloway
 26
 24
 32
 30
 39


 Total
 988
 1,006
 1,042
 1,071
 1,189



  Source: Information Services Division Scotland (ISD); Scottish Workforce Information Standard System (SWISS).

  Note: *The dissolution of NHS Argyll and Clyde took effect from 1 April 2006. From 2006, staff from NHS Argyll and Clyde transferred to NHS Highland and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

Sport

Jamie McGrigor (Highlands and Islands) (Con): To ask the Scottish Executive what support is available from central government, sportscotland and other relevant agencies for young people involved in rowing.

Stewart Maxwell: The Scottish Government through sportscotland invested £71,463 in Scottish Amateur Rowing Association in 2007-08 to increase participation and improve performance in the sport. A participation manager was appointed in 2006 to ensure young people across Scotland have access and opportunities to take up rowing.

  There are currently three indoor rowing projects in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Inverness which link into schools and are designed to get young people interested in the sport.

  This funding has also been used to supply adaptive rowing equipment to ensure accessibility of the sport for participants with a disability.

  Funding for upgrading and developing new rowing facilities can be applied for through sportscotland’s Building for Sport programme. Funding is also available for rowing clubs to attract young people through the Awards for All and Sportsmatch lottery programmes.

  Rowing is also now eligible for support from the Area Institute network and work is currently underway to develop the performance selection criteria for athletes to receive additional support provision.